or that animal bodies are like iron and mountains. How, then, could they agree with you that the Lord Most High would resemble His creation if they affirmed for Him what the Book and Sunnah affirm for Him? Allah Most High has denied likeness between certain created beings, although both are bodies, as when He says:

‘If you turn away, He will replace you with another people, who will not be like you.’

Yet both are human. How, then, can anyone say that if the Lord of the heavens possesses knowledge and power, He must resemble His creation? Nothing is like Allah Most High—not in His essence, His attributes, or His actions.”

The crux of the matter is that, in this denier’s view, being a body necessarily entails resembling all other bodies and being composed of indivisible atoms or of matter and form. Most rational people disagree with him about this necessary connection. Both sides agree that this necessary connection does not obtain, which is the point to be established.

Once they agree that Allah is free of the imperfection denied of Him by revelation and reason, their remaining debate concerns whether a body, as technically defined, necessarily entails this objectionable consequence. This is a rational inquiry, like the debate over whether accidents persist or not. The religion of the Muslims has not been made dependent upon this rational inquiry. Indeed, neither the Book nor the Sunnah nor any report from the early generations uses the term “body” concerning Allah Most High, either to deny or to affirm it.

No one, therefore, may introduce an ambiguous term admitting different meanings, which revelation has not used, and make the religion of the Muslims depend upon it—even if he uses it in its Arabic sense. How much more so if